After you died, every night, I went looking for you. I have a piece of paper in my pocket with your telephone number, but as I dial the phone, the numbers on the keys change to symbols I cannot recognize. Over and over I try to dial your number but I fail to reach you, the sun is rising and my night is almost over, I know I have to go home. “Please pick up” In these dreams I know it’s futile, I’m reckoning with the great big well of grief that was drilled through the center of me. Sometime I dream I am dead too, and I’m seated at a table with my family for dinner. Nobody speaks but everyone is smiling. But when I dream I am alive, I know I will be searching for you until the sun rises. My father died 18 years ago and for 18 years I’ve been painting about death. For an entire year I didn’t cry. Then, almost one year to the day, I fell to the ground and I wept. The sound that came out of me was foreign to me, like the sound of an animal. I cried every time I sat to paint this. On the final night, I dreamed this dream again but this time I didn’t have to dial his number, he was already on the phone, and he told me “you don’t have to know my number, you could always call me without it” Oil on canvas Not for sale #art #artist #oilpainter #oilpainting #artistsoftiktok #painter #painting #artistoftiktok #artoftiktok #oilpaint #surreal #surrealism #surrealismart #surrealart